Iraq and Afghanistan

While the bad news seems piling up again day after day in Iraq, there are still a few bright clouds. It has been noticed by the media that the condemnation in the Arab world of the attack on Falluja has been greatly moderated this time over what it was during Falluja I last April. It appears that many Arabs are tiring of the killing by their side as well as ours. This same turning against the insurgents is also apparent in a few stray comments picked up by the press within the country. It is also important to keep in mind the extent to which parallel American policies have succeeded, at least so far, in Afghanistan, a country that many would have regarded as more difficult — and one in which we have had relatively few troops. This latter point needs to be remembered by those (such as myself) who have always insisted that we went into Iraq with too few troops. One cannot assume that all is well in Afghanistan. But it does appear that the Taliban (or al-Qaida, together or separately) are contained. They can still kill on occasion. But they do not seem to be likely to derail the upcoming parliamentary elections. And beyond that point the country may be able to relax. The plans to develop and reconstruct Afghanistan were much less extensive than those for Iraq. The difference is that the reconstruction has been able to keep ahead of the destruction in Afghanistan. The foreign and Afghan national forces are not large enough to be providing the security that exists today. So it must be that the tribes and their hated war lords are actually keeping the peace, at least in their fashion. This may be a lesson we will have to relearn in parts of Iraq.

As the fighting in Falluja moves toward its inevitable end, we have learned at least some things. First, with present tactics, we cannot “take” a city without largely destroying it. Second, there appear to be thousands of insurgents who are willing to sacrifice their lives in what are essentially hopeless encounters. Well-armed, some of these have been able to exact a considerable price before they are cut down. Second, the forces defending urban targets are quite capable of moving from city to city, and perhaps back again as we leave. The insufficiency of American forces to take on the endless series of threats that this promises is suggested by the outbreak of heavy insurgent attacks in Mosul as we were trying to end up our campaign in Falluja. Due to these attacks, Mosul, a considerably larger city, has been starting to fall under the control of the insurgents in the last few days. To save the situation, the Stryker Brigade that had been fully involved in Falluja was hurriedly taken out of that battle and sent back to Mosul. The national police and other government forces have been badly hurt once again by the hit and run tactics of the insurgents. But many of the insurgent attacks were also beaten back. Kurdish forces appear to have done better than most. They are after all units that have fought together for years, not groups of people hired off the streets in the last few months to defend the country. Mosul is a mixed city and the Sunni Arab dominated insurgency will not have free sailing.

Even after clearing operations in Ramadi last month, guerrillas seem to be appearing openly on the streets once again, with the Marines pretty much tied down in their stations. There were also more attacks in Baghdad yesterday. In Kirkuk they tried to kill the provincial governor. In Baquba thirty men attacked a government post but were driven off. Mortar attacks were made in Hawija and a car bomb went off in Hilla. And so it goes. The pace has picked up a little in answer to the attack on Falluja, but actions are pretty much in the same pattern that we have seen for months. In the Triangle and neighboring areas there is just not that much progress toward getting control over this movement. Their foot soldiers are getting so emboldened and morale seems so high that it may not matter as much as we thought if the people turn against them. After all, gangs in Sicily, Naples, and elsewhere have managed to exert continuing control over their communities even when they came to be hated by average civilians — and when life expectancy for the average member was not that promising.

The second taking of Falluja is well advanced. So far there are few surprises. Evidently about half the insurgents and most of their leaders left before the attack. It appears as though the city was not effectively cordoned off by coalition forces weeks ago when the military started talking of an imminent attack. Insurgent resistance is sporadic. The military acts surprised to find that the insurgents do not stand and fight, but simply melt away to reappear somewhere else. These are classic guerrilla tactics and one can’t imagine why they would do anything else given the disparity in equipment. The city is being heavily damaged from the air, and the fire of artillery and tanks. The military reports heavy casualties for the insurgents but very few civilian fatalities. One can be excused for not believing this. I am sure they are trying, but when there a building blocks progress it is destroyed with little actual knowledge of what is inside. The recent Johns Hopkins study suggests that there will be significant civilian casualties in a battle of this kind in a city, no matter how hard we try to avoid them.

The expected fallout on the political side is occurring. Several members of the government from the Sunni Arab community are quitting (but not all). Some of the Sunni Arab parties are saying they will not now compete in the elections (but not all are saying so). The major Sunni Arab religious association has condemned the attack and told all Arabs to abstain in the election. Even Muqtada al-Sadr has condemned the attacks on Falluja once again. All this is predictable. Of course, it brings into question the rationale for the attack, which was to make the elections possible in Falluja and everywhere else. There was certainly a problem with holding an election in a city under the complete control of the insurgents. But it has always been clear that political gains of “going in” to solve this problem might not equal the political costs. In Europe and the Arab world the attacks are being treated as just more American atrocities, a highly biased and thoughtless response. Yet the reality is not necessarily all that is important. What we are doing is bound to raise these issues. And once out there, the propaganda is what is remembered.

The other justification is that our plan of attack beginning with Falluja, and then carrying on to Ramadi and elsewhere in Anbar Province will break the back of the insurgency. Both the election and counterinsurgency arguments rest on assumptions that may prove wrong. We can kill insurgents month after month and still find there are more insurgents than when we began. We can take city after city. But if we do not hold what we conquer, or if the poorly trained and motivated Iraqi government forces do not hold onto our gains, then we will simply have to do it all over again — even for the purpose of the January elections.

As I have often suggested in these postings, with the number of troops we have on the ground, perhaps the best we can do is isolate the insurgents in those areas where they have the greatest popular support. This will leave our forces and “our Iraqis” available for securing the great majority of the country that is relatively peaceful. To make this work we will have to develop more effective control of the insurgents outside their home areas than we have now. It would seem to me that with our excellent night surveillance capability this should not be impossible. The second step here is to go ahead and hold the elections as best we can. We can provide voters in much of the Sunni Triangle with voting opportunities, particularly in Baghdad. The Iraqis intend to have overseas voting; perhaps they could also arrange for some people to vote outside their actual home territories. Where there is insufficient voting, the parliamentary seats in question should be held in reserve as open seats until such time as a more adequate process is available. It seems foolish to hold most of Iraq hostage to the bitterness of an insurgency that represents less than twenty percent of the population. But unfortunately, all or nothing thinking on the election still seems to hold sway. Falluja II is one of the results of this stubbornness. Of course, what I am proposing may be unrealistic. But what is being done in Falluja is equally unlikely to turn out to be realistic.

Today’s Op-Ed by Kenneth Pollack makes several suggestions for anyone thinking about American policy toward Iran. Of course, his main point is that we should think many times before threatening another invasion. First, our forces are already spread too thin. Second, no matter how much they may hate their government, most Iranians are nationalists first. Third, acting peremptorily would shatter even further the worldwide web of alliances that was shaken by our actions in Palestine and Iraq. A fourth argument he does not make is that we would once again be threatening to destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands for unclear gains.

Pollack’s answer is along the lines of Kerry’s “policy” for Iraq: consultation, consultation, consultation — with Iran and with the Europeans and Russians. Pollack is thinking of our need to somehow eliminate the specter of another nuclear state in the Middle East. But there are other reasons that might be more compelling. And as long as we do not change our effective nuclear policy it seems doubtful that we can stop any country determined to have nuclear weapons from eventually obtaining them.

My concentration is on another problem and another Iran. The theocracy is once again showing its teeth. More and more people are being imprisoned or silenced for trying to express themselves, attending overseas conferences, etc. The campaign has extended to the internet with growing restrictions on sites and on the people who have set them up. I note that one Iranian webmaster in Canada with a dissident site believes that he has been threatened with death. Today Iran still remains very far from the Afghanistan of the Taliban. But if it did veer in that direction, would we and the rest of the world just stand by and watch? Remember, in retrospect many have concluded that we should not have stood by after Hitler came to power.

What we need is a much more effective means to effect “regime change” or at least “regime moderation” without the use of bombers and gun ships. One always thinks of economic sanctions. But when is the last time one remembers economic sanctions actually working, particularly against a determined regime? Blasting the country with heavy handed propaganda or training and arming overseas dissidents are possibilities. But they are unlikely to work. For one thing the Iranians taken in by these measures would tend to become pariahs in their own country. An effective program would be much more subtle, much more under the control of patriotic Iranians who themselves want regime change. It is past time that we seriously develop such alternatives. We have seen that regardless how evil a regime may be, war to replace the regime is neither good for us, good for them, or acceptable by the international community. Consultation with our allies might be a part of a peaceful approach to regime change, but it would be only the beginning.

The election of Bush has produced a great outpouring of commentary about “what went wrong”. A careful consideration of the results by a variety of statistical categories produces (as reported in the NYT Week in Review this Sunday), however, a much more nuanced position than is often encountered. Bush increased his relative vote in nearly every category and nearly everywhere. A notable exception is the 18-29 group. In economic terms, only the very poor preferred Kerry over Bush, and this was probably due in large part to the minority status of many in this category. Beyond that, the Bush percentage of the vote increased with the income of the voters. People did vote their pocketbooks (or at least in what they believed to be their economic interest). Looking at education, only those with graduate training preferred Kerry, college graduates and nearly all with less education preferred Bush. Bush was not elected by the suburbs. In fact, Bush lost only in the largest cities, and did progressively better the less the concentration of population. However, if we compare with 2000, Bush improved his position in the larger cities and suburbs, but did less well than he had in 2000 in smaller cities and rural areas (which is quite a surprise). Regionally, Kerry did well in the Northeast, the Upper Midwest, and the Pacific Coast. Previous political scientists had characterized politics in much of this areas as “moralistic”. (See Raymond D. Gastil, Cultural Regions of the United States for a snapshot of how the country breaks down regionally and some of the reasons for it.)

However, at the end of the day, the differences among the statistical and even regional groupings are relatively unimportant. Even among the wealthiest people there were a large number who voted for Kerry and even among those with graduate education, 44% voted for Bush. For those convinced that the “morals” question defeated Kerry, let me suggest as a caution the results from Churchill County Nevada. President Bush received 71.5% of the vote. Yet at the same time the voters rejected a proposal to reimpose a ban on prostitution in the County. The county’s two houses of prostitution are now closed, but the voters appear to be looking toward the future. (I do not think “moral values” should be confused with questions of sexual behavior, but in an environment in which voting for a ban on gay marriages is considered to be a vote for “moral values”, I am using the word as it is currently used in the political discussion.)

Given this situation, the advice being given to the Democratic Party to get off its high horse and develop a more populist, down-home, “values-centered” approach to “middle America” is unfortunate, particularly for the longer term. Op-Eds by Garry Wills and Bob Herbert suggest a somewhat deeper, if much more difficult strategy. Garry Wills see the current crisis as the result of a long-term retreat from the ideals of the Enlightenment on which the country was founded. While the rest of the world has moved away from the traditional, religion-dominated societies of the past, America has moved backwards. He asks, “Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?” Herbert points out that a remarkable number of Americans still believe that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq and that Saddam Hussein was working closely with al-Qaida before 9/11. He wants to add “teach-ins” to get more information out to the people.

My suggestion is that we must start further back. We must improve the quality of education. This does not mean “test-centered” teaching meant to satisfy politicians. It means education that provides students a background of information and intellectual tools against which they can evaluate new information. It means developing in students everywhere habits of interacting with the media that they can hold onto as they proceed through life. It means a requirement for general education for all students in colleges, no matter how technical their career objectives. And along with the requirement there must be an administrative commitment to see to it that all students become actively involved in such courses, instead of simply taking them to fulfill a requirement. It also means a commitment to continuing education through the media of people at all levels and with all initial persuasions. Above all, it means a great deal of effort between elections and outside of elections. To accomplish this, some of those very wealthy persons who regularly contribute to liberal and moderate causes, especially in election years, should commit to a long-term effort to educate the American people in science, government, moral values, and religion as these are seen from the Enlightenment perspective of our Founding Fathers.

I do not know how to achieve the goals set out above. Much of the effort must mix entertainment and information, must appeal to both emotions and minds. There will need to be a great deal of research on what works and what does not, especially over a period of years. But what I do know is that the United States is becoming an uneducated, backward country. Many parts of the population always have been ignorant; much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were hardly “enlightened”. Yet today we are the only superpower. We are the leaders of the world. If we do not lead, little gets done. Yet we find our people ill-prepared for this role. In many ways we have become more democratic than we were in the Eighteenth Century when people were prepared to be led by an enlightened elite. This is no longer the case. Now, whether we like it or not, what the United States does in the world will be determined by the people, by their wants, likes, and dislikes, by their ignorance or their knowledge. At present our people are not up the challenge. It is imperative that they develop the capacity to knowledgeably judge and decide public affairs for a complex world. If they do not, our future, and that of humanity, is not promising.

Blogs have become the new media for many Americans. But it has come to my attention that they are increasingly seen as a source of information or “news”. In an environment in which there is entirely too much unverified and unverifiable, indeed willfully misleading, information disseminated, particularly through the internet and talk radio, it strikes me that perhaps those involved, bloggers and blog visitors alike, should develop a more restrained attitude toward blogs. Unlike email exchanged among friends and acquaintances, blogs are sent out to a potentially large and amorphous public unable to judge the nature and the limitations of the author. This being the case, a blogger should look on his blog as a responsible enterprise meant to be a vehicle for the dissemination of his or her commentary. This commentary should, in my estimation, be based primarily on information gained from standard and reliable sources.

This leads immediately to the question of what are “standard and reliable sources”. To me, this means sources that are given credibility on a day in and day out basis by the media or by the academic and scientific community. These sources are admittedly often misguided, less informed than they believe, or frankly misguided. But these sources do contrast markedly with what I refer to as “casual sources”. These are sources whose verity or verifiability has not generally been widely accepted in the communities referred to above. Most of what we might call “rumor” and most bitter and tendentious communications falls into the casual category. If the blogger is actually a creator of new information, then of course this can and should be disseminated through the blog. But if the blogger is not personally the creator, or personally able to verify a piece of information, then he or she should pass on casual information received from casual sources not at all or only after heavy qualification with reference to the source.